Good dapps and real users are kind of the holy grail when it comes to blockchain platforms, and Steem has a good amount of both and was available to buy at probably a relatively low price.
That is a very expensive acquisition to kill most of it off - isn't it?
Quite the contrary I think. Let's say they bought Steemit for $20M (this is just a made up number, I don't know what the price was) and they have maybe a $400M stake in Tron (also a made up number), then if TRX goes up even just 5% as a result of all this then it's well worth it for them.
Sure, but it would have to hold there and they'd have to sell.
It makes sense to keep Steem as it is (SMTs/ communities) running into a Bull-market, wouldn't it? TRX holdings and 40M Steem is going to be more interesting in 6 months just because of the hype.
Nah, my guess is they could care less about the STEEM. It's a tiny nothing compared to TRX as far as market cap is concerned. Justin/Tron has a lot of money and they want to use it to give more value to TRX generally.
Then, they could just offer TRX incentives for the Dapps and community and many would jump ship.
He bought the real capital of steem, a group of relentless shitposters, he wants that traffic farm for tron, simple as that. He could have "offered incentives" as you say, but from a pragmatic perspective a hostile take over is way cheaper and simpler. And from a marketing perspective the take over has the sufficient shock and awe(specially the day Voice launches), when the "offering incentives" alternative clearly lacks it.
What is Voice? Lol
There is marketing potential but also a lot of risk that what he buys is vacant.
I think you are not understanding possibly because you believe Steem is better positioned than it is.
Steem had poor prospects the whole time for the next bull market. SMTs? No big companies were going to give a shit and the small projects would not amount to much value. SMTs were simply highly limited tokens marketed to projects that don't have the money to pay a solidity dev.
Voice is a big deal, not just to Ned who would see it as the threat Dan aimed it to be, but also to Tron. Steem is small potatoes, Justin probably sees it as near worthless shit. What he likely cares about is Voice, because Steem is a joke to him, EOS is the enemy. And Voice is the challenge to his BTT plans.
In all likelihood, the Steem acquisition of the Steem community is nothing more than a short headstart for BTT plans vs. Voice.
but how retarded is this. He buys Steemit inc and Steem gets fucked?
On a Blockchain Free uncensorable blah blah blah it shouldnd possible.
Fork out Steemit, with all there Steem and bam we win. It should be fast before things goes crazy.
newsflash: it was all a charade
Ninja Start, Ninja Exit
ninja profit
Interesting point.
But wouldn't $20million allow them to organize huge marketing campaign and hire several professional businesses to build community of loyal TRON followers?
If this takeover will be considered 'hostile' by current userbase, then TRON would lose not only money but they would end up having large amount of wealthy users, who would be very unhappy - such a community surely wouldn't bring much value. And it would create many conflicts.